


is it chill that you're in my head?

by dharmainitiative



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Derek "Nursey" Nurse is Unchill, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 20:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20823197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dharmainitiative/pseuds/dharmainitiative
Summary: It’s totally chill that Nursey keeps having these dreams about Dex -- normal, even. Dex is an attractive dude, and Nursey is single and, clearly, lonely. And it’s not like the dreams mean anything, right?





	is it chill that you're in my head?

**Author's Note:**

> one might assume that this fic was inspired by that one page from huddle vol 2 but i actually didn't make the connection to huddle until i was halfway thru this fic so *shrugs*
> 
> i also struggled with writing this fic a lot bc i was unsure if i liked it and i was unsure how to end it but i think i'm ok with how things turned out??? mainly just v relieved to get this out of my WIP folder yayyy
> 
> title from delicate by taylor swift

The first dream Nursey has about Dex happens October of freshman year.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Nursey has very vivid and imaginative dreams about all sorts of people, including Dex. (The first — technically — was in September, when he’d dreamt that he and Dex had tried to bake a lasagna and had accidentally broken Bitty’s oven and been consequently kicked off the team.) 

But the first _ dream _ Nursey has _ about Dex _happens in October. 

He actually knows the cause behind the dream, which isn’t always the case. Sometimes, Nursey has dreams about something that happened to him earlier that day — conversations he’s had with other people, thoughts he’s had in passing, stuff like that. Day residues, his Mama always calls them. And this dream, in particular, is inspired by one of Bitty’s tweets, of all things.

Evidently, Dex had asked Bitty, Ransom, and Holster if Samwell’s “one in four, maybe more” motto was actually true. Nursey wasn’t there for the exchange, of course, but the tweet left a bad taste in his mouth. Nursey could imagine Dex asking the question, could imagine the way he said it, and each time he imagined it, it made him more and more annoyed. Like, what did Dex care, you know?

So yeah, the idea that Dex might be a little more problematic than Nursey first assumed dwells in the back of his mind for most of the day. But Nursey didn’t think he was stewing over it _ that _ much — until he has a dream that night where he and Dex are hanging out in Nursey’s dorm when Dex says, tone just as irritating as Nursey had imagined it to be, “That ‘one in four’ thing about Samwell isn’t really true...is it?”

It’s not a weird scenario to have a dream about, necessarily. In fact, it’s almost like Nursey’s consciousness is giving him a cathartic method of airing all of the Dex-related frustrations that have been accumulating since freshman orientation. So, not one to waste an opportunity, Dream!Nursey replies, “Why do you care?”

Dream!Dex frowns, as if he has any right to feel offended after acting like such an asshole. “I’m just asking.”

“Your tone suggested otherwise,” Dream!Nursey says, still flippant and chill and a tad condescending, even while unconscious.

Dream!Dex narrows his eyes. “I don’t _ care. _I was just curious, that’s all.”

“Why?” Dream!Nursey asks. “Wishing you’d picked another school, instead?”

“What?” Dream!Dex frowns again. “Why would I wish that?”

“Well,” Dream!Nursey drawls, sitting up, and Dream!Dex watches him cautiously. It occurs to Nursey that they’re sitting a lot closer together on his bed than they should be, and he tries to remember if they started out the dream this close, too. “The way I see it, you’re either a homophobic dick, or buried very deep in the closet.” Dream!Dex’s mouth drops open in surprise, and Dream!Nursey smirks to himself, enjoying having the upper hand. “Take your pick, man.”

“I — I’m not — ” Dream!Dex flounders for a moment, before finally clenching his jaw and fixing him with narrowed eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Nursey.”

“Make me,” Dream!Nursey shoots back.

Dream!Dex’s face turns a splotchy red, and he fidgets with his hands for a second, as if not sure what to do with them. But just as Dream!Nursey is about to come up with another scathing remark, Dream!Dex looks around the room nervously, then darts forward and kisses him on the mouth.

In all fairness, it’s not much of a kiss — just Dream!Dex’s mouth pressed against his, his hands fisted in Dream!Nursey’s cardigan. Nursey isn’t sure if this is because his brain doesn’t want to put the effort into imagining what Dex kisses like, or if it’s because he assumes Dex isn’t that good of a kisser. Regardless, the kiss only lasts about five seconds before Dream!Dex pulls away. He’s still blushing, but it’s more of a soft pink than a blotchy red.

Dream!Nursey just stares.

“See?” Dream!Dex says, and, to Dream!Nursey’s disbelief, he smirks a little. “Not homophobic,” he declares, and Nursey wakes up before he can respond.

In the morning, he forgets all about it. He showers, brushes his teeth, and gets ready for practice. It isn’t until he’s in the locker room and Dex swats at Nursey with his towel when he almost stumbles into him trying to get his skates on that he freezes, and remembers.

For a while, he just stares at Dex, trying to piece things together, because surely he’s confused and didn’t _ actually _ have a dream last night about putting his mouth on _ William Poindexter’s mouth. _But the longer he stares, the more he remembers, and shit, yeah. That was a thing that happened.

“What?” Dex is saying now. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

It’s then that Nursey realizes he’s been staring at Dex — or, more accurately, Dex’s mouth — for a very alarming amount of time. Slightly embarrassed, Nursey shakes his head and turns away. “Nah, man. Sorry.”

Dex gives him a weird look, but doesn’t say anything else.

It’s awkward, having dreams about kissing people you know. Especially when that person is your teammate and d-man, who you kinda sorta can’t stand. But the longer Nursey things about it, the more he reasons that it isn’t that weird of a dream to have. He’d already been agitated with Dex that day, so it stands to reason that he’d have a dream about him that night. And the kissing thing wasn’t even that weird, anyway. It was nicer to imagine his teammate as deeply buried in the closet rather than openly homophobic, right?  
  
So Nursey pushes the whole thing from his mind and moves on with his life.

\--

Nursey’s second dream about Dex happens at the beginning of sophomore year. 

They’d ended freshman year on slightly better terms, much to Chowder’s relief. They weren’t best friends or anything, but they’d at least learned to go more than five minutes without screaming at each other, for Chowder’s sake more than anything else. And even Nursey has to admit that Dex has changed. He’s still uptight, and still a bit of an asshole, but he’s definitely gotten a lot less ignorant. In April of their freshman year, he even miraculously _ apologized _to Nursey.

“I’m working on being — better,” Dex had said, stilted and awkward and avoiding eye-contact. “But, you know. I’m sorry if I ever said something that might’ve been...I don’t know. Offensive. Or ignorant.”

“It’s chill, bro,” Nursey had said in response, trying to hide his shock. “No big deal.”

Dex had, of course, rolled his eyes, and then things had returned back to normal.

Despite their truce, though, Nursey’s a little anxious going into sophomore year, and worries that last semester was a fluke, and the time he spent apart from Dex over the summer will have them falling back into old habits.

Instead, when Nursey and Dex head back to Samwell, they pretty much pick up where they left off. The only real difference is that things are actually, well...better. Dex is clearly making an effort to be less of a dick, and he gets a lot less aggravated every time Nursey so much as opens his mouth. Nursey, for his part, makes an effort, too — he tries not to automatically assume the worst of Dex, and tries not to go out of his way to antagonize him. 

And it’s kind of nice, actually. They still argue, but not as often, and they work better together on the ice than ever before. Most surprising of all, they actually sometimes even _ get along. _So maybe they’re not friends, exactly, but sometimes it feels like they almost are.

Except for there’s another thing, also, and that’s that Dex got a _ lot _hotter over the summer.

Look, Nursey’s always known that Dex was attractive, objectively. Just because he couldn’t stand the guy didn’t mean he didn’t have _ eyes. _But working his uncle’s boat must have paid off, because Dex comes back to Samwell tanner, and freckle-ier, and with a bit more muscle than he’d had back in May.

And obviously Nursey isn’t stupid enough to lust after his d-man that he only just started getting along with, but Dex has been wearing a lot more muscle tanks lately, and so really, the second dream is Dex’s fault, if anything.

This dream, which happens mid-September, is one that he remembers vividly when he wakes up, but forgets more and more as the day goes by, which happens with his dreams, sometimes. By the end of the day, Nursey can only remember little details of the dream — the bass of whatever song had been playing at the kegster, dragging Dream!Dex back to his dorm, Dream!Dex pushing Dream!Nursey gently onto the bed and blushing as he slid off the bed and onto the floor in front of —

Anyway. Nursey knows the gist.

He panics a little, for most of the day, and is still low key panicking about it that night, when he and Dex are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table in the Haus doing homework. He thinks he’s doing an okay job at pretending to be chill until Dex suddenly kicks him underneath the table.  


“What?” Nursey snaps, startled.

“You’ve been staring at me for five minutes now,” Dex says, deadpan.

Nursey blinks and then immediately looks back down at his laptop. “My eyes were fixed,” he says, which is more or less true.

Dex sighs, and Nursey hears him stand up, and then a few minutes later he’s back, standing next to him and pressing a mug into his hands before Nursey even fully knows what’s going on.

“What’s this?” He asks, staring down at what is obviously a cup of coffee.

“Coffee, dumbass,” Dex says, sliding back into his chair across from Nursey. “You looked like you need it.”

Nursey frowns. “It’s seven.”

“Yeah, and you have an essay due in five hours,” Dex shoots back.

Nursey’s frown deepens. “How do you know that?”

Dex raises an eyebrow. “Because you complained about it all day yesterday?”

Which is true, actually, but Nursey didn’t expect Dex to remember that. He was sort of under the impression that Dex tuned Nursey out when he talked most of the time. So, a little pleased, he grins. “Thanks, Dexy.” 

Predictably, Dex’s ears go pink, and he grumbles and turns back to his homework. “What’s up with you, anyway?”

_ I had an awkward sex dream about you last night and have been trying not to panic about it all day, _ is a sentence Nursey is definitely _ not _willing to say out loud, so he says, “Had trouble sleeping last night.”

Dex looks back up. “What, nightmares?” He teases.

Nursey looks at Dex, who is admittedly attractive, sure, whatever. But come _ on. _He refuses to be the guy that has a sex dream about someone just because they had a glow-up and started actively striving to do the bare minimum. 

Also, Dex still hasn’t learned the proper pronunciation of the word “quinoa.”

“Something like that,” Nursey finally says, and then the two of them resume their work in silence.

By the time Nursey finishes his coffee and turns in his essay, he feels a bit calmer and more rational about the whole situation. And after a few days, and a bit of Googling, he decides that the dream really isn’t worth working himself up over. After all, sex dreams don’t always have to mean anything. Sometimes, having a sex dream about someone represents a desire for emotional intimacy with the person, which is still a little embarrassing, but not entirely off-base. He and Dex have been getting a lot closer, lately, so it feels only right that their tentative friendship would manifest itself in his dreams, somehow.

So that’s one explanation for it. The other — which is a little more likely — is that Nursey just really, really needs to get laid.

So Nursey makes a mental note to find a hook-up at their next kegster, and pushes the dream into the corner of his mind where his other dream about Dex and embarrassing memories from high school go, and moves on.

\--

Everything changes after the dib flip. 

(When Nursey had announced something similar to Chowder, he’d responded, “Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked,” imitating Nursey’s dramatic and somber tone in a sarcastic manner. Nursey had hit him with his Sharks pillow.)

Still. Before, Nursey thought that he and Dex were maybe, sort of, begrudgingly friends; their arguments were bickering more than anything, and occasionally they got along, even when Chowder _ wasn’t _ around. They’d grab pizza for dinner together when Chowder was busy with Farmer, and they’d meet up for brunch at Annie’s every now and then, and sometimes they’d study together which would inevitably turn into Nursey trying to convince Dex to watch a horror movie with him while Dex tried to convince Nursey that it was perfectly normal to not want to watch a horror movie and it _ wasn’t _ because they scared him.

For a while, things were really, really good. And then they just weren’t.

Dex’s (over)reaction to the dib flip doesn’t bother Nursey, not at first. In fact, he almost finds it funny — because seriously, Dex has the audacity to call _ Nursey _extra? But as time goes by, Nursey thinks about it more and more, until he starts to realize just how much Dex hates the idea of rooming with him, and that...hurts.

So Nursey spends the last few months of sophomore year antagonizing Dex, hanging out with Chowder, trying to pass his finals, and valiantly pretending like William Poindexter didn’t hurt his feelings, and that’s when the third dream happens. 

Or, more accurately, that’s when Nursey begins to wonder if something is up.

In Nursey’s dream, Betsy 2.0 kicks the bucket, and naturally, after mourning the loss of pie, Nursey and Dream!Dex make a bet on how long it’ll take Jack to pay for Betsy 3.0 to be installed. Nursey bets it’ll take a week, and Dex bets it’ll take a month, and when Jack pays for Betsy 3.0 six days later, Nursey wins the bet.

The reasons why this dilemma is so important to them are never explained, and neither are the reasons behind the terms of the bet, which are that if Nursey wins, Dex has to take him on a date. 

And that, essentially, is the premise for why Nursey’s unconscious imagines himself at a restaurant with Dream!Dex.

In the dream, the date is at a small, nice little restaurant, and it’s a product of Nursey’s imagination but it still looks kinda like the Chinese place he and his moms go to all the time in New York. Except for when Nursey looks down at their menus, he realizes it’s not Chinese food at all. 

“Hey. Is this place vegan?”

Dream!Dex doesn’t look up from his menu. “Uh, yeah. I guess so,” he says, like he isn’t the most conscientious person in the world and has never once, in all the time Nursey has known him, gone to a restaurant without Googling the menu first.

And Dex isn’t vegan, and neither is Dream!Dex as far as he knows, but Nursey is, and knowing that Dream!Dex cares and listens and knows how important something like this is to Nursey to the point that he went out of his way to find a place where he actually had _ options _for things to eat means more to him that he thinks he can express. So instead he smiles to himself, orders, and doesn’t bring it up again.

The rest of their dream!date is actually...not disastrous. It’s the best dream date Nursey has ever had, certainly, and even though none of it is actually happening, his mind is doing a pretty convincing job at making it seem real. It’s hard to believe that Nursey has made up the way Dream!Dex laughs at his jokes — not with a snort, or an amused chuckle, but a loud, genuine, vibrant laugh — but, whatever. Nursey’s always been creative.

They talk about a lot of things — their classes, the Falconers, Farmer and Chowder’s relationship, which of their teammates they can see getting married first. In a way, it feels like any other time they’ve hung out, and maybe that’s what Nursey likes the best about it. And towards the end of the night, when they’re arguing over which dessert they should split, Dream!Dex stretches his leg out and rests his knee against Nursey’s, and doesn’t move again for the rest of the night, grinning at him through bites of vegan brownie and trying to steal bites from Nursey’s side of the brownie, too.

And it should be nothing — it’s just a knee pressed against his, kind, genuine smiles, and the kind of chirping he’s gotten used to after two years. 

But in the dream, Nursey feels warm all over, so he thinks it might be something.

Nursey pays after they finish their dessert, and Dream!Dex only tries to argue with him a little bit. They walk back to Dex’s truck together, and Dream!Dex lets Nursey pick the music on the way back and doesn’t say anything about how hipster it is once. And when they get to the elevator of their dorm building, Nursey presses the button to his floor and Dream!Dex just stands silently next to him, even though they don’t live on the same floor. 

“Walking me back to my dorm, Poindexter?” Nursey says, hoping the teasing lilt to his voice will hide how loudly his heart is beating. Dream!Dex predictably flushes, but doesn’t respond. Nursey suddenly feels nervous.

Sure enough, Dream!Dex follows Nursey to his dorm, and stands and waits next to him as Nursey pulls out his key-card. But after rooting through his wallet to find the key-card, Nursey makes no move to let himself into his dorm. Instead, he glances down, fiddles with it, and eventually looks back up. “I had a lot nicer of a time than I thought I would,” he admits finally.

“What a compliment,” Dream!Dex says, deadpan. Nursey laughs.

“Well, I thought you were gonna mess with me and make this the worst date in history,” he explains. “Like, pull a Jake Peralta.”

“I mean, I wanted to, originally,” Dream!Dex admits. He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “But then I thought...I don’t know. That it might be nice if I planned something nice instead.”

It’s a sentence loaded with far too many “nice”s, but Dream!Dex’s ears are turning pink, so Nursey forgets to mention anything about it. “Well, I had a good time.”

Dream!Dex smiles, shy and pleased. “Yeah?” Nursey nods. “Uh, good. Me too.”

“Good,” Nursey says awkwardly and then stands there for a few seconds more, not saying anything. When Dream!Dex doesn’t say anything either, Nursey turns to swipe his key-card on the door. “Well, night, Dex.”

“Night, Nursey,” Dream!Dex replies, and Nursey swipes his card and opens the door and is just about to let it swing shut behind him when Dex blurts out, “Wait!”

Nursey pauses and looks over his shoulder, where Dream!Dex is still standing in the hall, fidgeting. “Yeah?”

“Um,” Dream!Dex stammers. “I just — I mean — do you want to do this again sometime?”

Nursey raises one eyebrow. “Do I want to make another bet where you lose and have to take me on a date again?”

Dream!Dex chews his bottom lip. Finally, he says, “I was thinking we could just forgo the bet part.”

Nursey blinks. “You want to go on a real date?”

Dream!Dex’s entire face is crimson. “We don’t have to,” he mumbles. “It’s — that was dumb, I don’t know why I — ”

And even Dream!Nursey has no time to deal with Dex’s insecurities right now, so he cuts him off and says, “Yes.”

Dream!Dex’s mouth snaps closed with an audible click, and he stares at Nursey. “Yes what?”

“Yes, I’d love to go on a real date with you,” Nursey says. He tries to sound confident, but he’s pretty sure he stammers a little bit.

But maybe it doesn’t matter, because Dream!Dex’s grin is breathtaking. “Okay,” he says, voice softer and gentler than Nursey’s ever heard it sound before. “I — uh. I’ll text you tomorrow?”

“Oh, you better,” Nursey warns, but the stupid grin on his face takes away from teasing tone in his voice.

Dex flushes. His smile, earnest and a little goofy looking, still hasn’t gone away. “Okay. Um, goodnight Nursey.”

“Night, Dex,” Nursey says, and then his alarm goes off and he wakes up.

You know that feeling you get when you dream about having an argument with someone and you wake up mad at that person for the rest of the day, even though in reality, they did nothing wrong? That’s the feeling Nursey has the day after the dream, only it’s the opposite, because every time Dex smiles at breakfast, or laughs at practice, or just generally exists in Nursey’s presence, Nursey is reminded of every time Dream!Dex had smiled, or laughed, or generally existed in Dream!Nursey’s presence.

Logically, he knows it shouldn’t be a big deal. He’s had far weirder dreams about other people — he’s had far weirder dreams about _ Dex, _come to think of it. But none of those dreams have ever felt like this. He spends weeks with the dream lingering in the back of his mind, distracting him from mundane tasks — once, while writing an essay, he gets so caught up thinking about it that he stops typing mid-sentence.

Even worse, he acts even weirder around Dex. Weird staring, laughing nervously every time Dex tries to talk to him — the usual reactions Nursey has every time he has an awkward dream about Dex. He hopes he isn’t obvious and that Dex doesn’t notice, but his hopes are dashed the next time they have practice, when Dex leans over as they’re tying their skates and says, softly, “Hey. Is everything okay?”

“What?” Nursey jumps, startled. Dex raises his eyebrows. “No, yeah. Why wouldn’t things be okay?”

“You’ve been weird lately,” Dex says, frowning. “Is this...is this because of the dib flip thing?”

“No,” Nursey says immediately. It’s only half true, because it _ is _the reason behind why he’s been avoiding Dex lately, but the dib flip is the absolute last thing he wants to talk about right now, especially with Dex.

“I just — I shouldn’t have freaked out like that,” Dex says, brow furrowed. He looks down at his skates instead of at Nursey. “It wasn’t...well. It wasn’t ‘chill,’ I guess.”

Nursey is so surprised that he laughs out loud. Dex immediately looks up, and smiles slowly, looking relieved and a little pleased, too. It’s not a smile Nursey sees that often, especially directed at Nursey. Unconsciously, he feels himself smiling, too.

“It’s fine,” Nursey says. It’s not, completely, but Dex’s sort of apology makes it a little more fine, at least. “I just haven’t been sleeping a lot.”

Dex regards him for a second before deciding, “You get weird when you don’t sleep.”

Nursey laughs humorlessly. “You don’t know the half of it.”

So things between him and Dex are okay, for now, and the rest of the semester goes on like normal, except every now and then, he thinks about the dreams again, and he worries. And Nursey prides himself on being a pretty chill guy and everything, but these dreams about Dex...well, they have him lowkey panicking. The “what does this mean,” “why does this keep happening to me,” “is my subconscious trying to tell me I’m secretly in love with my partner/best friend/sorta frenemy/future roommate” kind of panic.

But after a couple of weeks go by, the panic fades. It probably has something to do with “final exams are just around the corner” panic replacing it, and it also probably has something to do with Nursey catching the unattractive way Dex nearly chokes and dies eating spaghetti noodles in the dining hall a few weeks after the dream. 

Nethertheless, Nursey decides he’s being dramatic. There are plenty of logical reasons why he had that dream about Dex, and the ones before it, and there’s plenty more to explain why he focused on them for so long. He’s lonely, for one thing — Nursey hasn’t been laid in months, and he hasn’t been on a date for even longer. And as for Dex, things are getting back to normal, but things between them have been a little more tense than usual ever since the big blow-out over the dib flip. It’s not all that weird for Nursey to have a dream about him and Dex getting along really well and having a good time — wishful thinking is more like it.

So, really, it’s not a big deal that Nursey had a dream about going on a somewhat romantic date with Dex. Obviously, it’s all chill.

\--

The fourth time Nursey dreams about Dex is when he finally stops lying to himself and admits that things are not, in fact, chill.

The fourth dream happens about a month or so after he moves in with Dex, when things are...well, not great. They argue constantly, Dex is always on his case over every little thing, and it all comes to a head when he flees to the basement. 

But it’s chill, really. Nursey figured Dex wouldn’t stay — he even called it during the dib flip. And Nursey is cool with having his own room — he prefers it, actually. And clearly Dex is much better off in the basement. He actually made it look really nice, what with the mailbox and the plants and the extra-as-hell lamps. 

It doesn’t bother Nursey at all, that Dex moved out — honest. Like he said, it was bound to happen. Nursey is a mess, and sort of annoying, and he can be a lot to deal with, as a friend but especially as a roommate, so he doesn’t blame Dex, not really. 

A lot of people get tired of Nursey eventually, and Dex barely tolerated him to begin with. He was naive to expect anything less.

So Nursey does his homework in his room alone, laughs with the Waffles about _ finally _breaking stubborn, stick-up-his-ass Poindexter, ignores all of Chowder’s concerned looks, and doesn’t talk to Dex much at all, really. And after about a few weeks of this, Nursey has the fourth dream.

Just like _ Mr. Brightside, _it starts out with a kiss. Or, actually, it probably doesn’t, and there was a prelude to the dream that Nursey just can’t remember, but in the morning, the first thing he thinks about is the kiss.

They’re in Dex’s bunk, and Dex’s little hobbit hole is gone, and all of his stuff is back in their room, and Nursey thinks that maybe Dex never even moved out at all. They’re sitting next to each other on Dex’s bed, talking or maybe watching something on Netflix — he can’t quite remember — when Nursey turns to look at Dex to find him already staring.

So Nursey blinks, and then leans forward and kisses him.

Dex doesn’t stiffen, or pull away, which is maybe what Nursey expected him to do. Instead, he responds immediately, leaning into the kiss and moving his hands up to frame Nursey’s face.

It’s nothing like the first dream, which had been chaste and awkward, or the second dream, which had been quick and frantic. This one is softer, and sweeter, and slower, and eventually Dex is pressing Nursey down into the bed, kissing him slow like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing. 

It’s...well, it’s a lot for Dream!Nursey’s poor heart to handle. And it gets even worse when Dex pulls away, hair in a complete disarray and his face red, blinks slowly, and says, gentle as anything, “I love you.”

Nursey immediately tugs Dex back down, winding an arm around his neck and his hand into his hair. He’s not sure how much longer they kiss, but when Nursey pulls away again, he’s panting in a way that should be embarrassing but for whatever reason, isn’t.

Dex rests his head under Nursey’s chin and Nursey runs his hand through Dex’s hair and murmurs, “I love you, too.”

Dex tilts his head back to beam at Nursey, and they probably kiss some more, but when Nursey wakes up that’s the last thing he remembers.

When he wakes up, he’s not sure how to feel. Because he doesn’t actually...well. It’s not like he actually _ loves _ Dex. He doesn’t hate himself _ quite _that much.

But he thinks he’s honest enough with himself to admit that he maybe likes Dex. 

Okay, definitely likes him, because there are times where the fluttering in his stomach he feels in these dreams is something he feels in real life, too. Like when Dex looks over at him with a reluctant but fond smile, or brings Nursey coffee the exact way he likes it, or sends Nursey a meme not because he thinks it’s funny but because he knows Nursey will think it’s funny.

But it feels like it’s been ages since he and Dex were at that point in their relationship, because it’s such a drastic contrast from the cold distance that’s between them right now. And that’s not even getting into how far of a cry it is from the soft exhale Dex made when Nursey had first kissed him, and the way he’d melted into the briefest touch.

It makes him cringe in an embarrassing way just thinking about it, but also, for a moment, it makes him ache with a want so badly that he feels it all the way down to his fingertips. 

But it’s a brief moment, because it’s Thursday, and Nursey has an 8 am. So with a heaving sigh, he rolls out of bed and makes his way to the bathroom he shares with Chowder, and no one else anymore.

“I hate my life,” Nursey announces to his reflection.

Immediately, the bathroom door leading into Chowder’s room bursts open, and Chowder steps into the doorway, a concerned frown on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Sometimes Nursey thinks Chowder is a superhero, only his super power is automatically being able to sense when one of his friends is upset. “Nothing, Chow. Just tired.”

If Chowder were anyone else, he’d accept Nursey’s answer with a nod and would then leave him alone. But because this is Christopher Chow, he says softly, “You know you can talk to me if you ever need to, right?”

Nursey looks at Chowder, and then looks back at himself in the mirror. He _ looks _tired, is the thing, and he is, but it’s emotionally, not physically. He’s been carrying these dreams, this secret, the way he feels, for so long. And maybe he needs some help figuring all of this out, anyway.

Nursey turns back to Chowder. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone else?” Chowder doesn’t immediately answer, so Nursey sighs. “Aside from Cait.”

“Oh!” Chowder says with relief, and then nods somberly. “Then of course.”

Nursey finds he can’t look Chowder in the eyes and say it, so he turns back to the mirror, only that’s worse, so finally, he looks down at the sink. “I think…” he says quietly. “I think I like Dex.”

“Holy shit,” Chowder says, which is about the sort of reaction he expected. What he doesn’t expect is for Chowder to say, “Are you just now figuring this out?”

“What?” Nursey snaps his head up. “What are you talking about?”

Chowder bites his lip. “I mean...I kind of figured you liked him already.”

Nursey gapes at him. “What? When? How?”

Chowder grins sheepishly. “Uh...a while now? You’ve been flirting with him since, like. Freshman orientation.”

“That wasn’t me _ flirting, _” Nursey insists as Chowder expectantly waits for an explanation. “That was just…”

Nursey thinks back to freshman year, where he’d spent most of his time teasing Dex, making his ears turn pink, wrestling with him, coming up with nicknames to call him just to see what sort of reaction he could pull out of him.

Nursey drops onto the toilet seat with a thud. “Holy shit. I _ was _flirting with him.”

Chowder pats Nursey’s shoulder sympathetically and sits on the edge of the tub across from him. 

“Wait,” Nursey says, suddenly panicked. “Do you think Dex knows?”

“Oh, no,” Chowder reassures him. “Definitely not.” Nursey lets out a sigh of relief. “What made you figure it out?”

Nursey huffs out a laugh, tilting his head back against the bathroom tile. “I kept having these, like...dreams about him.”

Which sounds way weirder than Nursey intended it to, and it sounds even _ worse _ when Chowder waggles his eyebrows and says, “Like, _ sex _dreams?”

Nursey narrows his eyes at his friend. “No.” Chowder just looks at him. “Okay, like once.” Chowder giggles. “Shut up. Just, like, they’re mainly...romantic dreams. Super embarrassing shit. And at first I thought it was nothing, but then it kept happening and I had one last night that was…” He trails off. “I don’t know. A lot. And so I guess I realized that maybe it’s not nothing.”

Chowder considers this for a moment. “Are you going to tell him?”

Nursey snaps his head up. “Are you crazy? Fuck no.”

“Okay, fine,” Chowder says, raising his hands in surrender. “But you should at least talk to him. Not about this, necessarily, but. You guys should talk.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Nursey says tiredly. “He _ doesn’t _talk to me.” Chowder frowns, and Nursey blows out a long sigh and leans his head back against the wall again. “I’m just...God, I can’t believe I hate myself enough that I have genuine feelings for someone that doesn’t give a shit about me. Or even like me. At all.”

“You think Dex doesn’t care about you?” Chowder asks softly.

“Yes,” Nursey says, and then looks back over at Chowder, who’s watching him with a sad look in his eyes that’s way too much for Nursey to deal with at seven in the morning, so he looks away again. “No. I don’t know.”

Chowder lets out a hum, then says, “You wanna know what I think?” Nursey doesn’t, which means it’s something he probably needs to hear, so he waits. “I think Dex cares about you, a lot. And it kind of scares him. And he doesn’t really know what to do about it.”

Nursey isn’t quite sure what to say to that, so finally, he scoffs. “Well, whatever. If he does, he has a weird way of showing it.”

“He does,” Chowder agrees. “And it’s no excuse for how shitty he’s been lately. Or overall. But I really think things would get better if you could just _ talk _to each other.”

Chowder’s right, is the thing, but Nursey’s nothing if not a petty bitch, and it’s not like he’s the one who blew up and moved out, so _ he’s _certainly not going to be the one to break the ice first. But he’s not going to tell Chowder that, of course, so instead he says, “Yeah. Maybe.”

Chowder smiles. “It’ll work out,” he says reassuringly.

Chowder doesn’t know that, of course. For all he knows, Dex will live in the basement until they graduate, and he and Nursey will never speak to one another again. But he sounds so optimistic and hopeful and _ sure _that Nursey can’t help but think that maybe things will be okay, after all.

“You’re the best, Chow. You know that?”

Chowder smiles wider. “I know,” he agrees without a hint of irony, and Nursey laughs and pulls him into a hug.

\--

In the end, it’s Dex that breaks the silence, not Nursey, because two months after Dex moves out, he moves back in.

“The basement was cold,” Dex says by way of explanation when Nursey opens the door to his room to find Dex standing outside, a big box in his hands. When Nursey just stares, Dex adds, almost hesitantly, “And your mess wasn’t that bad, anyway.”

It’s not the apology Nursey deserves, but it’s the best he’s going to get at the moment, so he silently steps out of the way and lets Dex in.

So they live together again, and they’re adjusting to each other’s quirks and habits, and it’s going better than the first time, but they still don’t really talk. And really, what would Nursey say? “Great practice today, Dex. Hey, I know we haven’t, like, hung out for six months, but I miss you in a very lame way so do you wanna go grab Annie’s? Also, thanks for continuing to ignore the giant fucking torch I’ve been carrying for you for months now. I really appreciate it!”

Yeah, not gonna happen.

Besides, the friendship they had before the dib flip, before the frequent dreams, and before Nursey realized he had very unrequited feelings for his d-man...he doesn’t know if it’s possible to get back to that. Things have been so weird between them for so long that Nursey isn’t sure how to get back to any semblance of normalcy. It’d be easier if Dex could give him some sort of sign that it was okay, could give him the go-ahead to reach out and try to mend the awkward gap between them. Sometimes it feels like he’s going to, like when he looks over at Dex while he’s studying to find Dex looking back, or when he wakes up after a kegster to find aspirin and water next to his bed. 

But Dex never says anything about the aspirin, and every time Nursey catches him looking he looks away, and Nursey doesn’t know what to do with these little moments, so he doesn’t do anything. 

So things stay the same, and maybe that’s for the best. After all, it’s hard to imagine a genuine friendship between the two of them without Nursey’s giant feelings getting in the way.

By the way, the dreams are more frequent than ever, now, which Nursey finds very inconvenient. They’re not every day, because that would be an absolute nightmare, but they’re at least once a week. His mind conjures up all sorts of scenarios — holding hands, introducing one another to their parents, kissing on the ice at playoffs — and each seems more embarrassing than the last. 

It’s awful, but Nursey’s not going to pretend like there aren’t times where he’s a little impressed by his own creativity. The other night he had a dream about him and Dex that was essentially the plot of _ Pride & Prejudice. _

(Nursey was Elizabeth Bennet. Obviously.)

But it’s weird, because at times the dreams are too much and Nursey will go so far as to lose sleep to avoid them. But there are other times, where after a day spent longing to breach the distance between him and Dex but knowing there’s no point, he goes to bed almost _ yearning _for another dream, for an imaginary reality where things are...well. Not like this.

So Nursey just deals with it, to the point where having feelings for Dex feels more like a fact of life rather than an inconvenience. Like….the sun sets in the West, the Earth orbits the sun, and Nursey is hopelessly gone on William J. Poindexter. 

It finally gets to be too much during an away game at the beginning of the spring semester, when a win against Harvard results in a group celly, and Dex’s arm wraps around Nursey’s waist for the briefest moment, and before Nursey can do something stupid like lean into his touch, he’s drawing away. 

It wouldn’t be a big deal, except for it’s the closest they’ve been in months, and yet Dex still won’t even _ look _at him, really. Not in the locker room, and not on the way back to the hotel, and not when they’re getting ready for bed, brushing teeth side by side and avoiding eye contact.

It’s ridiculous, Nursey decides, that things have to be this way, and that he doesn’t know how to fix it, so Nursey goes to bed frustrated and angry, and he dreams.

It’s one of those vague dreams, where things just happen and there’s no real plot to explain them. It’s just little snapshots of Nursey and Dex, studying together or winning the play-offs together or adopting a puppy named Sebastian together. It’s normal stuff, really, until it suddenly isn’t, and Nursey finds himself watching an older Nursey and Dex graduating together and moving in together and getting married and adopting kids and —

“Nursey.”

Nursey jolts awake. For a second, he just lies there, recovering from the mortifying feeling of knowing that he’d really just dreamed about doing all of those things with William Poindexter, who he’s not even dating and who hates him 90% of the time. And finally, once he’s recovered, he rolls over in bed to turn to Dex. “What, dude?” He asks, a little crabby at being woken up in the middle of the night.

Dex, who’s sitting on the edge of his own bed, looks almost as mortified as Nursey feels, which...isn’t right. Suddenly, Nursey is wide awake.

“Dex. What do you want?” Nursey repeats, hoping the horror growing in his voice doesn’t sound as evident to Dex as it does to him.

“Nothing,” Dex says, clearing his throat. He doesn’t look directly at Nursey. “Just. You were talking in your sleep, that’s all.”

Nursey feels his stomach drop. He slowly sits up in bed. “What was I saying?” Nursey asks.

It’s a stupid thing to ask, especially when Nursey probably already knows the answer. It would’ve been easier to drop the subject and go back to sleep, and hope Dex forgot all about it the next morning. Still, when Dex doesn’t immediately respond, Nursey says, “Dude. What did I say?”

“Nothing,” Dex says again, though the look on his face means it’s clearly not nothing. “Just, like, my name. And stuff.”

“Stuff,” Nursey repeats. Dex shifts in his seat. “What kind of stuff?”

Dex laughs nervously. Nursey’s never seen him blush this much. “Uh. I don’t know.” He laughs awkwardly again. “Like. You said we should get married at some point.”

He laughs again, like he’s expecting Nursey to join him. Nursey doesn’t. He feels a lot like that time he tripped over his skates during practice and the wind had been knocked out of him when he hit the ice.

“Nursey, it’s fine,” Dex says, when Nursey still hasn’t reacted beyond sitting on the bed, frozen. “It’s not like you actually want to get married.” Nursey is still frozen, and his face must reveal _ something, _because Dex’s face does something complicated, too. “I mean, you don’t...right?”

“Of course not,” Nursey hears himself say. “Derek Poindexter has an awful ring to it.”

Dex is beet red again. “Um. I mean, sure.”

Nursey still feels frozen. None of this feels real, like he’s watching it happen to someone else and not him. Since when does he talk in his sleep? How much did Dex hear? How did something he’s successfully kept a secret for three years suddenly stop being a secret?

“I can’t do this.” He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but it happens. Suddenly, he’s jumping to his feet and heading into the bathroom.

“Nursey...what are you doing?”

“Packing,” Nursey replies, not looking back. “Chowder and Tango probably won’t mind if I crash on their floor for the rest of the night, right?”

“_ What? _You’re leaving?” Dex asks, incredulous.

“Yep. Seems like a good thing to do when things get weird,” Nursey says, grabbing his stuff from the bathroom and tossing it into the suitcase lying at the end of his bed.

“Nursey, come on. It’s not that weird. Look, it’s just...it’s just one dream.”

Nursey laughs humorlessly. “Yeah, no. It’s not just one dream.” 

Dex is silent. Then, “What?”

“It’s not just one dream,” he repeats. He doesn’t know why he says it. He doesn’t know why he adds, “I dream about you _ all the time, _” either. 

He doesn’t have to look up from his suitcase to know that Dex is blushing even harder now. “Oh. Um. I mean. That’s still fine. Like, they’re just dreams, right? They don’t have to mean anything.” 

And Nursey’s tired. He’s tired of lying, and pretending, and _ dreaming, _and wishing he didn’t care so much about someone who will never care about him in the same way. So finally Nursey looks up at Dex, and just stares.

Dex stares back, and when he finally puts it all together, he blinks.

“Oh,” Dex says.

Nursey doesn’t say anything, and resumes packing his suitcase.

“So. This is like, a thing.” Dex stammers out, his voice stilted and awkward. “Are you — I mean — every time you’ve acted weird...and you said it was because you hadn’t slept...was that because — ”

“Stop talking, Dex.”

“I’m just trying to — ” Dex starts, and then breaks off, frustrated. “Look, can you just stop so we can talk about — ”

“Nope,” Nursey interrupts, stuffing his outfit for tomorrow in his suitcase. “I have no interest in talking about how I have unrequited feelings for someone who kind of hates me 99% of the time, thanks.”

Out of all of the things in that sentence, the thing Dex choses to latch on is, “You think I _ hate _you?”

Nursey drops the shirt in his hands to look back up. “_ Don’t. _ Okay? Don’t have the audacity to sound _ hurt _by something you’ve made obvious all year, like you’re playing the victim or something.”

“I’m not _ playing _ anything,” Dex says, defensive, which is more like the Dex Nursey knows and — knows. Yep. Definitely wasn’t going to end that sentence another way, or anything. “I’m just trying to — goddammit, Nursey, stop packing and _ talk to me. _”

“Nope,” Nursey says, finally zipping his bag closed. “I’m gonna head out. I’ll be in Chowder’s room. Or fleeing the country. I haven’t actually decided yet.”

“_ Nursey, _” Dex says, exasperated. 

Nursey, hand on the door to their hotel room, stops and finally turns around. “I’m — look, I’m sorry, okay?” Dex blinks. “I mean, not for...I’m not sorry for the way I feel, because if I could change it, I really fucking would. But I’m sorry you found out, and that things are weird and that they’ve been weird for a while. And if you want to move out again, that’s fine. And if you want to just ignore me and avoid me until we graduate, that’s fine, too. I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing, right?”

“_ Nursey, _” Dex says, in the same pleading tone, but what can he say, really? Nothing he says can undo Nursey’s confession, or the weird awkwardness that’s between them now, so before Dex can say anything else, he steps out into the hallway and closes the door behind him.

He half expects to break down and panic as soon as the door closes, but he doesn’t. None of it feels real, is the thing. He can’t wrap his head around the idea that something he’s kept secret for so long — something he didn’t even know about himself, up until recently — isn’t a secret anymore. He can’t wrap his head around the idea that Dex knows the one thing he never wanted him to find out, that this is going to change everything, that he might lose one of the most important people in his life all because of his stupid fucking feelings.

So instead of thinking about any of that, Nursey knocks on Chowder’s door, who looks sleepy and confused to see Nursey at 2 AM. Nursey doesn’t offer an explanation, so Chowder doesn’t ask for one, and when he crawls back into bed he pats the empty space next to him.

Nursey crawls into bed next to him, pulls up the covers to sleep, and then doesn’t think about anything at all.

\--

The next morning, Nursey showers in Chowder and Tango’s bathroom and tries to assess the situation. The situation being that after an awkward dream and confession, Dex knows that Nursey has an annoying and embarrassing crush on him.

Nursey spends most of his shower assessment time trying to convince himself that this situation isn’t as bad as it could be. Dex’s reaction to this revelation was never gonna go great, but it could’ve gone a lot worse. He was uncomfortable and awkward about it, sure, but he could’ve been angry, or even worse, disgusted. 

But maybe not. He and Dex have had their ups and downs since freshman year, and some pretty terrible fights, but if he’s being honest with himself, he can’t really imagine a scenario where Dex would be _ that _cruel. 

And hey, maybe the fallout won’t be so bad. Maybe they can deal with this like adults and just cordially tolerate each other for the next year and a half. Being cordial isn’t exactly something they’ve been good at in the past, of course, but you never know. And if they can’t do that, and Nursey has to move out, maybe that won’t be so bad either. He could always ask Chowder if he could move into his room. Or he could even pull a Dex and retreat to the basement, and they can just avoid each other until they graduate.

Except for how would that even work, really? They’re teammates, and even worse, _ partners. _ If they can’t get it together, their game might be in jeopardy. What if Dex requests to switch partners? Would Hall and Murray even allow that without some sort of explanation? Fuck, is Nursey supposed to _ tell his coaches _that he’s been pining away for his d-man for the past year or so?

It’s then that Nursey realizes he’s doing a really bad job at convincing himself to look on the bright side, and decides to shut the water off and get out of the shower.

“Hey,” Chowder says with a cheery but hesitant smile when Nursey exits the bathroom. “Good shower?”

“Yep. Your water pressure is way better than ours.”

“Nice,” Chowder says, and for a second, Nursey thinks he won’t say anything at all, then, “So...last night?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, cutting Chowder off. Chowder frowns, and Nursey looks away, because it’s all too easy to cave into the puppy dog eyes. “I just want to eat a good ass continental breakfast and nap on the bus and forget about my problems.”

Chowder sighs. “Fine. But you should at least brush your teeth before we leave. Your breath reeked this morning.”

“Love you, too, Chow,” Nursey says with sarcasm, and Chowder beams as Nursey grabs his toothbrush and toothpaste and makes his way back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Before Nursey has even finished applying toothpaste to his toothbrush, the door is opening again. “Damn, Chowder, give me a second to — ”

But when he looks up, it’s not Chowder standing in the doorway of the bathroom. It’s Dex.

“Hi,” Dex says, looking a little sheepish, and before Nursey can answer, the bathroom door shuts behind him and _ clicks. _

Nursey drops his toothbrush. “Chowder?”

“Yeah?” Chowder says from the other side of the door.

“Did you just lock us in here?”

“I sure did,” Chowder says, sounding eerily chipper.

Nursey glares at Dex. “What the fuck, dude?”

Dex, who looks surprised, raised his hands in surrender. “You think this was my idea? I just wanted to talk. I didn’t think he was going to _ lock me in. _” He turns around and raps on the bathroom door. “Chowder, come on, dude. This is a little much.”

“A _ little much? _ ” Chowder repeats, sounding outraged. “‘A little much’ is _ nothing _ compared to the hell you guys have put me through. This is the only way I can think of to get you guys to pull your heads out of your asses and actually _ communicate. _I’m doing this for your own good!”

“Chowder, what the fuck?” Nursey shouts, joining Dex at the door and pounding his fist against it for good measure. “You’re literally holding us hostage!”

“Stop being dramatic! It’s what needs to be done!”

“_ No it’s not! _” Nursey shouts back. “Let us the fuck out!”

“Who even fucking designed this hotel room?” Dex wonders aloud, sounding frustrated. “How is a bathroom locking from the outside safe?”

“I was confused about that too!” Chowder shouts back. “But Johnson texted me last night to say that the bathrooms in this hotel can lock from the outside for plot related reason!”

“What?” Nursey demands. “Who the fuck is Johnson?”

“It doesn’t matter! I’m not unlocking this door!”

“CHOWDER!” Dex yells, banging his foot against the door.

“Nope! I’m going to breakfast!” Chowder calls. “And by the time I get back, you two _ better _have sat and talked this shit out!”

“Chowder!” Nursey cries, but he can already hear him walking away in the background. “Dude! C’mon!” There’s no response. After a little while, Nursey says, helplessly, “At least bring us some muffins from breakfast when you come back!”

Dex snorts. Nursey looks over, but he’s looking at his feet, and not at him.

Nursey sighs. “So. Care to explain how I ended up locked in a bathroom with you?”

Dex makes a face down at his feet. “Well, I may have texted Chowder asking if you were in his room and if he could convince you to let me talk to you. But I didn’t think his idea of convincing you would be locking us in a bathroom.”

Nursey snorts this time. “Yeah, well. Goalies.”

Dex looks up and smiles at him. Nursey looks away.

He knows that Chowder will let them out when he gets back, regardless of whether they’ve talked things out or not — it’s not like the bus can leave without them. But being trapped in a bathroom with Dex in silence would be just as excruciating as being trapped in a bathroom talking things out, and he might as well take the more productive route.

So Nursey slides to the floor to lean against the bathtub, and Dex slides to the floor to lean against the door, and Nursey says, “So. What did you want to talk about?”

Dex’s eyebrows raise. “Oh, we’re actually doing this? I thought you would just ignore me this whole time.”

“Very tempting,” Nursey admits. “But I figured we should rip the bandaid off sooner rather than later, right? Go ahead, proceed with your rejection speech.”

Dex stares. “Wait, what?”

“Let me guess,” Nursey continues, because joking about it makes it hurt less. “It goes something like, ‘Thanks, Nursey, I’m really flattered, but it’s actually kinda weird that you have a lot of weird dreams about me, so no thanks.’ Or I guess it could be something like, ‘Actually Nursey, you’re very loud and obnoxious and talk about Jane Austen too often so there’s no way we’d ever — ’”

“Would you stop it?” Dex cuts him off, glaring. “I wasn’t going to say any of that.” Nursey waits, expectant, and Dex hesitates, looking nervous. “I was going to say — I was just going to say that I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about me. And the way I feel about...you Us. Things.”

Nursey blinks. “Well,” he says slowly. “I’m not sure how that could’ve happened. It’s not like you freaked out about the idea of living with me, and then got so angry at me you moved out, and then avoided me for months.”

Dex winces. “Okay, that’s...fair. I’ve been an asshole.”

“Understatement.”

“Also fair,” Dex says, wincing further. “But I’ve never been that good at feelings — which isn’t an excuse. But it felt like every time I did something I just made everything worse, so these past few months I just stopped doing things, only that just made it worse, too, so. Fuck. I don’t know. I’m bad at this.”

“Sure are,” Nursey says, matter-of-fact. Dex makes a face again. “Also, what do you mean you’re bad at feelings?” Dex looks away, so he presses further. “Like, does that mean you don’t know how to process emotions like a normal human being, or are you just trying to nicely say that you didn’t know how to process hating me 90% of the time.”

He’s mostly joking, but Dex looks up sharply. “What? Nursey, I don’t...I don’t _ hate _you.”

“When you found out we had to share a room, you had a meltdown on Lardo’s floor,” Nursey says flatly.

“I know and I — I was overreacting and being an asshole, and I shouldn’t have acted that way, but it wasn’t because I hate you, alright? It was — ” He breaks off and goes red, and looks away. “It was because I _ like _you.” 

It’s so not what Nursey was expecting Dex to say that for a second he thinks he’s misheard him. “Huh?”

“_ Ugh, _” Dex groans, burying his face in his hands. Nursey can see his blush through the spaces between his fingers. “I’ve just — fuck, this is embarrassing. I’ve had a massive crush on you for — fuck, I don’t know. Just. I didn’t know what to do about it and then I freaked out when I found out we were going to live together and I kept trying to push you away because I thought you’d find out but then we just kept arguing and I was miserable because I thought that if we couldn’t even live together then there’s no way you’d ever — ” Dex cuts himself off and clears his throat. “Anyway. I just. Moved out because I thought that’d be easier.”

It feels like Dex is speaking Greek. “What?” He says faintly.

Dex peeks out from behind his hands, and it’s _ not _cute, because Dex is an asshole and Nursey’s angry with him. “There’s no fucking way I’m repeating any of that.”

Nursey can’t help but snort at that. Dex lets out a dry chuckle as he picks at the loose thread on his pajama pants.

“Why did you move back in?” Nursey finally asks, quiet. “After all of that?”

Dex shrugs, still a little pink, and looks down at his knees. “I don’t know,” and then, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I missed you, I guess.”

“Oh my God,” Nursey laughs in bewilderment. “Fuck you.”

Dex looks up in confusion. “What?”

“You’re such an asshole!” Nursey cries. “You can’t just — ignore me and avoid me and make me think you don’t even care for _ months _ and then just... _ say _shit like that!”

“I wasn’t _ avoiding _you,” Dex insists, eyes narrowed. “I was trying to give you — you know, space and shit.”

“Right,” Nursey says with an eye roll.

“Did you…” Dex stops, and then speaks again, hesitant, “Did you really think I didn’t care about you?”

Nursey wants to say yes, just to see Dex’s reaction, but he doesn’t think it’ll make him feel any better. Besides, when he thinks back to Dex looking at him and leaving Advil beside his bed — the little moments he didn’t know how to interpret, the olive branches Dex extended but never waited around to see if Nursey would accept — he realizes it’s not completely true, anyway.

So Nursey decides to tell the truth, and says, “Sometimes.”

Dex lets out a long sigh, and then he’s silent for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he says finally. Nursey looks over at him, almost surprised. “I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk, and for freaking out about moving in with you, and being unbearable to live with, and moving out, and making you feel like I hated you or didn’t care. And I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to apologize for those things, too, I guess.”

“I accept your apology,” Nursey says, because his mom always taught him that it’s better to say that rather than “it’s okay,” because that implies it’s okay for the other person to continue to do the behavior they’re apologizing for. Then he admits, “I’m sorry, too. For antagonizing you and poking at you and teasing you when I definitely shouldn’t have. And I was pretty unbearable to live with too, so.”

“Yeah, leaving the pie under the bed was a bit much.”

“Maybe,” Nursey agrees. “You kinda deserved it, though.”

Dex laughs, and Nursey feels himself smiling without meaning to.

“I want — ” Dex starts, and then stops. “Well, a lot of things. Some things that we aren’t ready for.”

Nursey’s heart skips, and he swallows. “Yeah. Neither of us are very good at feelings,” he admits.

Dex goes pink again. “But, um. I think I’d like to try to keep living together. And being friends. Who like, communicate and stuff. Not just people who happen to get along every now and then.”

“Yeah,” Nursey says again. “I’d really like that, too.”

Dex smiles at him, open and earnest. “Okay. Good,” he says, and presses his knee gently against Nursey’s. 

Nursey’s just beginning to wonder if there’s anything else they should discuss before Chowder comes back — hopefully with muffins — before Dex clears his throat.

“By the way,” he says. “I don’t think you’re loud. Or obnoxious. I think you’re really smart, and passionate, and interesting. Even when you’re talking about Jane Austen.”

He’s beet red, and he stammers a few times, but he stares at Nursey, genuine and honest and a little fond, the whole time he says it.

It’s a lot to deal with.

“Oh, uh,” Nursey stammers out, very overwhelmed. Dex grins, like he’s pleased, and that’s absolutely _ not _allowed, what the fuck. 

And before Nursey can further embarrass himself by coming up with some sort of reply, the bathroom door knocks from behind Dex, making him jump.

“Hey! You guys still alive in there? I have muffins!”

“Oh thank God,” Nursey says, and Dex laughs.

Chowder swings the door open and gives them both a scrutinizing once-over. “So,” he says carefully. “Everything okay?”

Dex looks over at Nursey, and Nursey looks back, pressing his knee more firmly against Dex’s.

“Yeah,” Nursey says. “We’re good.”

Dex ducks his head, but not before Nursey catches his smile. The bathroom tile is freezing, but he feels really warm all the sudden. It’s a familiar feeling, but only because he’s dreamt about it. It feels different when he’s conscious. 

It’s a feeling he could get used to, Nursey decides.


End file.
